Writersoom in Brighton

Thursday evening at the Sallis Benney theatre saw Paul Ashton from the BBC Writersroom essentially presenting all ten of these – Paul is a brilliantly engaging speaker, and the love for what he does was more than obvious to everyone present. Lots of frantic notes were scribbled, and someone in front of me even videoed the whole thing. There wasn’t a huge amount of time left at the end for an extensive Q&A, and part of this was taken up by two questions on copyright (sheesh!). Suffice to say, the BBC will assume all copyright in your work once your script has been sent into Writersroom.*

Afterwards I went here with the beautiful and talented Michelle Lipton, the insanely personable Sheiky, and the always entertaining Mister G, who regaled us with tales of writing for The Bill and getting a sitcom commission. Yowsa! At this point you may well ask what I’m doing hanging around with such talented people when all I have to offer is a Uwe Boll story. Well, ask away; I haven’t a clue either. All I know is that the likes of Ms Lipton cannot escape, as she now owes me cake. Quite a lot of it, in fact. So there.
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* This is a lie, for which I apologise. I am a bad person.

Memery Goodness

I got tagged by the bloggingly prodigious Stevyn Colgan – it’s a good one, but I can’t guarantee to stick to the thirty word limit (perhaps the meme police will come get me – here’s hoping, I love a good scrap).

Sod Richard and Judy. Sod Oprah. What would you advise people to read? Name your favourite:

(a) Fiction book
(b) Autobiography
(c) Non-fiction book
(d) A fourth book of your choice from any genre.

Explain why the books are essential reads in no more than 30 words per book.

a) Fiction: Jonathan Meades, Pompey: “the sleaze epic”. A great, big sprawling rambunctious romp which takes in Portsmouth, the origins of HIV, and an insane sojourn in Belgium; one of the most inventive novels I’ve ever read. In addition, Jonathan Meades has written one of the best short stories ever: Filthy English, at turns enticing and repellent. Read it and be appalled.

b) Autobiography: John Lydon: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs. Forget the gurning loonpanted fruitcake of Jungle and butter advert fame. In his day, John Lydon was at the forefront of a huge sonic revolution – and I’m not talking about the Sex Pistols here.

c) Non-fiction: Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine. Some sections of this book – in particular the parts regarding the South African banking system and its part in apartheid, will literally take your breath away. If you thought that post-apartheid South Africa was somehow finding its feet, think again. Super scary.

d) The Fourth book: JM Coetzee: Disgrace. I prefer my ‘entertainment’ to be served up with a large side order of shock and awe (or a shovel round the back of the head, whatever you prefer). Just when you think you’ve got Coetzee taped, he pulls a series of unexpected narrative left turns that leave you wondering why all literary fiction can’t be this good. The ending is sad, profoundly unsettling and bleak in a way that no film could ever match.

Right, I tag Lawrence (what is it about Lawrence’s blog? Every time I go there, I always end up finding something both hilarious and genuinely demented), Rachel (honestly, Rach, you gotta calm down on the project front: Doctor Chip suggests more time on Lolcat and perhaps the odd Airfix kit), Potdoll (who I’m glad to say now addresses her readers as ‘Happy Knickers’) and Lucy (in need of a relaxing post after taking great big chunks out of Shooting People for the last couple of weeks).

Race Against Time

After having read Rachel’s and Lawrence’s current project list, I’m starting to seriously ponder two things:

a) In order to find the time, they have obviously made some sort of pact with the Great Satan himself (Noel Edmonds, in case you were wondering)

b) I am a lazy, unmotivated arse.

How do they do it? Jiggered if I know. Suffice to say, I’ve spent the last three months or so writing and rewriting my Red Planet entry. Even if it doesn’t get through the first cut, it’s something I want to keep working on (I’m even considering writing a second episode, fer chrissakes).

The timescale for this year’s Red Planet suited me quite well, as it happened – I rewrote the first ten pages about half a dozen times before I had something I was happy with, which I did in parallel with a rough first draft. By the time the deadline loomed, it was ready for a good kicking courtesy of Adrian Reynolds. To be fair, Adrian offered up more in the way of what he terms ‘coaching’ than a strict reader’s report which again, suited me just fine. A couple of Adrian’s suggestions really resonated, and I’ve used his sage words as fuel to inform a second draft, essentially a page one rewrite. Let’s face it, first drafts are crap: mine are always overwritten, chock full of exposition, static conversations and weird, jerky pacing. In any rewrite, I can usually zero in on these types of occurrences and start to pull apart and put back together scenes with a more focused eye. Now, at the end of the second draft (it’s taken about a month), I’ll go out again for another read with a different reader. Then another rewrite probably. And then it just might be bordering on the ‘OK’. You get the idea. Just as well I prefer rewriting to the grunt work of getting a first draft down on the page.

There we have it: four months work essentially. I’ve been tinkering with that treatment a little bit as well, but I’m not doing anything further on it until I get something in writing (an MOU would be nice, but I’m not holding my breath). But that’s another story...

So tell me guys (I’m looking at you, Rachel and Lawrence): how do you do it? Do you share some sort of fancy machine that somehow elongates time? If so, do you want to swap it for mine that seems to do exactly the opposite (on a trial basis, of course. I’ll let you have yours back if you ask nicely). ;-)

It’s All About Me Me Me

This blog was one year old last Tuesday. Hooray! Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to post a picture of a croissant in celebration, so here’s a picture of a cake I made earlier**:Cakes and croissants aside, here’s a summary of the last twelve months:

* I’ve had scripts shortlisted for TAPS and METLAB, plus a load of script reads from people who’ve stroked their goatees and proclaimed, "Hmmm – very interesting, Mister Smith," in a vaguely sinister fashion. On the downside, I picked a fight with Gordy Hoffman, the Blue Cat heavyweight bruiser. For the record, Gordy is an all round good egg and I’m a very sore loser (never play Monopoly with me, as I will ‘accidentally’ knock over the board if I’m losing – you have been warned!).

* Unfit for Print had its first death threat! Double hooray! I upset a support band I reviewed here, who proceeded to leave a stream of badly spelt swear words and incoherent insults in the comments section. I unfortunately removed these due to the many morally upstanding people who frequent this blog (incidentally, I wasn’t the only one who thought they were awful), but even so – a death threat! Good, eh? That’s another ambition ticked off the list.

* I wrote about a band with a lot more presence and talent back in August 2007 here. And – holy crap! – six months later, various members of Slab! piled onto the comments section and turned it into an unofficial message board for the band, which is still trundling on as I type. All this is set to change in the near future, as the band have just announced their new website here (it’s still under construction, but looks pretty sparkly so far). And what’s more, head honchos Stephen Dray and Paul Jarvis are back in the studio working on Slab’s third album after a layoff of nearly twenty years. Triple hooray! Also, trivia fans, Slab’s phenomenally talented ex-bass player Bill Davies’s father is none other than the BBC’s adapter–in-chief, Andrew Davies (Slab! even featured in an episode of the Davies penned A Very Peculiar Practice). Well I never.

* One of the first comments on the Slab! thread was from Tim Elsenburg, who fronts up the banjo-packing laptop pop hurricane that is Sweet Billy Pilgrim. With one fine album up their sleeves, SBP were a real find for me this year – I can only urge you to buy their album several times over and rejoice in the fact that the internet does occasionally offer up things that are truly worthy of attention.

* On a more personal note, I’ve been stalked by Stanley Tucci and Myleene Klass, who has personally attempted to sell me everything from travel insurance to Classic FM CDs. Really, there ought to be a law against it.

* After I had a good moan about them, Marchmont Films re-launched their website – and guess what? It looks exactly like the one before (but without mention of the British Curry Awards)!

Here’s to another 12 months of carousing!

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** This is obviously a lie.

7 Songs

Oooh, I’ve been memed by the Target obsessed Mr Stickler (honestly, Rob: Starship Trooper featuring Sarah Brightman? Zoiks!):

List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they’re not any good, but they must be songs you’re really enjoying now, shaping your spring.

Well, let’s see now:

1) Holiday in Cambodia - Dead Kennedys (picked out the first album today for a blast).
2) Create and Melt – Dali’s Car (don’t ask, please).
3) Love and Mathematics – Broken Social Scene
4) The International Tweexcore Underground – Los Campesinos!
5) Glasgow Mega Snake - Mogwai
6) Fucked Up Kid – Kevin Drew
7) New Year – Death Cab for Cutie.

(Thank God this meme wasn’t called 9 Songs, otherwise this post would have been another anti-Winterbottom rant).

OK, I tag Robin, Lucy, Elinor and Rachael, although I suspect they’ve all been ‘done’ already – so consider yourselves double memed! Or something.

Cheers, Big Ears! (Part 2)

After I unceremoniously dumped my first Sharps effort, I started a second. I think it’s a whole lot better than the first, but what the heck do I know about anything? So that’s where John Soanes, Rachael and the blogless Caroline came in – all hail PO3! As usual, the feedback process exposed a few flaws in my grand scheme (a subplot that didn’t need to be quite so pronounced, a face-off between the terms psychopath/sociopath and some banter on Scientology - always a pleasure!), so this post is a ‘tip of the hat’ to this intrepid trio of reviewers for finding the time to read and comment on my latest effort. Thanks all! I have still to return the favour for two of them, so all I will say here is: get your fingers out! The deadline of 16th June is fast approaching, my friends...

All in all, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the writing process for Sharps. Thirty minute drama is not something you see a lot of these days, but even so, as a writing sample it’s a whole lot easier to digest than a 100 page feature script. And if my entry doesn’t get anywhere, I have a piece of work that I’m happy with (doesn’t happy very often). I'll have to try more of these half hour things.

Right, I’m off to watch some football.

Off on a Tangent, Part 9 - More Slab!

I wrote about Slab! here some time ago, and I’m pleased to say that, for a band that’s been defunct for nearly twenty years, they appear to be gaining a good deal of attention, both on the net and beyond.

First off, there’s Slab’s My Space page, set up by Tim Elsenburg of the folktronica outfit Sweet Billy Pilgrim (check out the fantastic tracks Bruguda and the gorgeous Meantime here).

Tim is also writing a piece on ‘songs that changed my life’ for The Sunday Times – the song chosen? Dolores, by Slab!, which you can hear on the MySpace link above. Without a doubt it’s the best track on the album, and probably (for me at least) amongst some of the best – and heaviest – music ever recorded. And lurking underneath the massive beats, drum machines and scuzzed out bass, there’s an honest to goodness tune. It doesn’t get any better than this.

Oh, and if anyone can track down any pictures of this elusive band, let Kevin know on artpics@sunday-times.co.uk

Problems in Oz

The super-reliable Robin Kelly has already posted an article from The Australian where Lynden Barber examines the state of screenwriting down under. Lynden also has an interesting and informative blog on which he has posted the three interviews that served as source material for the article. They make for entertaining and enlightening reading – not just from an Australian point of view, but how it might equate to a UK context. Duncan Thompson’s comments on continuing drama are especially interesting...